


Meant to Fly

by seashadows



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Femslash, Originally Posted on LiveJournal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mercedes Jones is destined to be a star - just not in the traditional way. But since when has she ever been traditional?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meant to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> AU, post-Goodbye, since I thought Mercedes's fate was a little ridiculous.

  
Annette Jones goes into her second labor at six-thirty in the morning on December 15, 1993, right as she’s about to get into the shower. Her shouts of pain wake up her three-year-old son and startle her husband Matthew into jerking his razor across his face, leaving a dripping red gash bright in the white shaving cream.   
  
Matthew cancels his dental appointments for the day and drops their son off at his mother-in-law’s house as soon as he gets a Band-Aid properly situated on his cheek. Julia, who loves her grandson but can’t get over the fact that her son-in-law actually _cooks_ , just shakes her head and laughs when Matthew explains what’s going on.   
  
“You’re gonna have a baby brother or sister,” she says, crouching down and cupping little Eric’s cheeks in her palms. “What do you think?”   
  
The baby, a daughter, is born at St. Rita’s Medical Center. Julia comes to visit and brings Eric with her, as well as her own opinions on what the baby should be named. Matthew wants ‘Anne’ to be a part of the baby’s name, to pay tribute to Annette’s eleven hours of labor, but Julia is Black Dominican and was raised under the most Catholic of influences. She thinks that Maria would be suitable, either as a first or a middle name. “Or Mary,” she insists. “It’s worked for two thousand years, eh?”   
  
Annette and Matthew compromise, and name their daughter Marianne Mercedes. “Our Christmas miracle,” Matthew says as he lifts his son up to see his baby sister. “Isn’t she beautiful?”   
  
Eric, of course, is only concerned with his father’s words. Babies are nothing special, even when they’re related to him. “It’s not Christmas, Daddy.”   
  
Annette, exhausted, grins and raises one shoulder in a half-shrug. “It’s close enough, sweetie.”   
  


~

  
  
Baby Marianne is only two years old when, one day, she decides that she likes her middle name better than her first. “ _Mercedes_ , Mama!” she insists, and shouts “No!” when Matthew or Annette calls her Marianne. Of course, she also says “No!” to everything else, but Mercedes is a pretty name, so her family doesn’t fight her.   
  
Eric, five years old now and a few months into kindergarten, giggles when he hears that. “Mercedes!” he crows, and runs to his room to grab a toy car. “Vroom!” He skates it around his sister and bumps the fender into her foot. “Uh-oh! It’s a Mercedes crash.”   
  
Matthew pats Eric’s head and looks at Annette, who’s filling out a form at the dining-room table. “At least no one will confuse her with you.”   
  
Annette laughs and rests her head in her hands. “These kids,” she says, “are gonna drive us nuts.”  
  


~

  
  
Mercedes starts kindergarten at Independence Elementary School when she’s five and a half. She knows Spanish because of her Grandma Julia, so she understands what Santana Lopez is saying when the other girl yells at her for spilling paint on her construction paper. “Hey!” she protests. “That’s a mean name.”   
  
The teacher scolds Santana, and Mercedes sits alone until a boy sits next to her a few days later. He’s wearing a nicer shirt than any of the other boys. “I like your beads,” he says shyly, looking at her braided hair. “They’re pretty.”   
  
Mercedes’s cheeks heat up, and she shakes her head to make her beads shake, too. “Thank you,” she says, just like her mom taught her. “My name is Mercedes Jones. What’s yours?”   
  
“I’m Kurt Hummel,” the boy says.   
  
“Hummel,” Mercedes repeats. It’s a fun name to say, and it makes her want to hum a song. “Do you like to sing?”   
  
Kurt’s face lights up. “Yeah! I really like singing.”   
  
She finds out that he doesn’t have a brother or sister, but wants one (he gets jealous when she tells him about Eric, even though Eric is a third-grader and he can be a mean pain in the butt), that he likes clothes, and that he’s six years old already. He tells her that his dad fixes cars, and is going to teach Kurt to do the same thing. Kurt already knows what a monkey wrench is.   
  
When Mercedes goes home that afternoon, she tells her parents that there’s a nice boy at school who might be her friend now.   
  
The next day, a group of big boys throw Kurt into a trash can. She stays away from him after that, even though it makes her stomach hurt like it does when she teases Eric, because the way he limps after that scares her.   
  


~

  
  
When Mercedes is eight and a half, she asks Noah Puckerman why he has tan skin if he’s white. He brought a menorah to school last winter when almost everyone else brought Christmas-tree ornaments.   
  
“My mom’s _Sfaradi_ ,” he says proudly.   
  
Mercedes doesn’t know what that is, but when she asks her mom what _sfaradi_ means, Mom knows it. She says the word _Sephardi_ and explains what the Spanish Inquisition was, and Mercedes feels hot and guilty for the rest of the week whenever she sees Noah. At church, the minister says that Jesus is lord, but she doesn’t see why anyone should hurt anyone else for believing different things.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes is ten years old now, and finally old enough to join the choir at Grace Baptist Church. When she arrives at her first rehearsal, so excited that she’s practically glowing as she holds her music folder in her arms, she’s surprised to see a few girls her age there. She hasn’t had a good look at them for a while, since her family sits in a far-away pew, and they look…different.   
  
Faith and Michaela have straight hair now, and when they look at her with their eyebrows raised, she feels babyish in her braids. They ask her why she hasn’t started getting her hair relaxed yet, and her smile disappears for the rest of rehearsal.   
  
“Mom,” she says when her mother comes to pick her up, “can I get a relaxer?”   
  
Mom slams on the brakes. “What?”   
  
Mercedes looks down at her lap, where her music folder doesn’t look quite so shiny and exciting now. “They said I have bad hair,” she says, so softly that her voice is almost a whisper. “Can I have straight hair like yours?”   
  
Her parents argue for a long time that night. When Mercedes listens at their bedroom door, she hears the words _good hair_ and _Eurocentrism_ and _self-hating_ , and all of them sound angry. Her dad doesn’t understand why she shouldn’t have straight hair, and her mom doesn’t understand why she has to want it, and Mercedes doesn’t understand why they’re arguing at all.   
  
She knows it makes her stomach twist inside, though.   
  
A few weeks later, her mother cuts off her straight hair and says she’s going to start growing her hair out natural. When Mercedes asks why, Mom says she wants to be a good role model. “Honey, people are going to say all kinds of crap like ‘bad hair’,” she tells her. “The least I can do is show them this family doesn’t believe it.”   
  
Mercedes isn’t sure what she believes about her hair, but her mom’s Afro makes her feel better about her own tight, springy curls. The braids stay in.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes starts sixth grade at Lima North Middle School when she’s eleven going on twelve. That’s when she meets Rachel Berry, who went to Heritage Elementary and is in advanced math and English with her. They’re also in choir together, sitting in the girls’ section away from the boys, who avoid them and cluster in groups by themselves.   
  
Rachel is _loud_. She’s also a chatterbox. “I think I’m a dramatic soprano,” she says one day when Mercedes is reading a book and waiting for the bell to ring. “I mean, I’m not done developing yet, but when I’m older, I’m probably going to be dramatic. I can already belt.”   
  
Mercedes doesn’t know what belting is. In church choir, she’s learned to use her strong voice and sing out of her lungs into her face, but maybe they learn different things wherever Rachel’s been singing. “What do you think I am?” she asks. If Rachel is dramatic, maybe Mercedes is un-dramatic or something.   
  
Rachel shrugs. “I don’t know. Your voice isn’t distinctive enough. An alto, maybe?”  
  
Mercedes feels like she’s just been smacked in the face. The church choir director told her once that she had a gorgeous voice and he’d think about giving her some solos when she got older, but maybe he was wrong.   
  
Or maybe Rachel is just being obnoxious. That’s a word her parents have been using to talk about Eric lately – he’s in ninth grade and turns his CD player up way too loud – but Mercedes thinks it fits.   
  
She sits with Brittany Pierce, who also went to Heritage, for the rest of the year. Brittany is kind of stupid and she told Mercedes once that she wanted to lick her face to see if it tasted like ice cream, but she doesn’t care about belting.   
  
Brittany is friends with Santana Lopez, who doesn’t seem to have forgiven Mercedes for telling on her about the kindergarten insult, but at least she’s not insulting her voice. That’s more than Mercedes can say for Rachel Berry.   
  


~

  
  
At the dinner table one night when she’s twelve, Mercedes asks, “What’s a fag?”   
  
Eric laughs. “Oh, man.”   
  
Her parents are quiet for a long time before either of them says anything. “Where did you hear that?” her father finally says. “Was someone teasing you at school?”   
  
Mercedes shakes her head. “Someone was calling Rachel Berry names. This boy said her dads are fags. What’s that mean?” She’s heard the word before, so she knows it’s some kind of insult, but she’s not sure what it means. The boys say the same thing to Kurt Hummel, too. Maybe they don’t like his singing, either.   
  
“It’s a very rude word for a gay person,” her mother answers. “Never use it.”   
  
“I’m not gonna.” How stupid do her parents think she is? She doesn’t repeat everything she hears, especially if it’s mean. “Why do people say it, if it’s rude?”   
  
“Because they’re afraid of people who are proud to be different,” Mom says. “And…” She pauses, looking at Dad. “There are a lot of people who say that being gay is a sin, and try to hurt anyone who is.”   
  
“Is it?”   
  
“Of course it isn’t,” her dad says. “Why would God make gay people if they’re not meant to be just like they are?”   
  
“Oh.” That makes sense. At church, Mercedes has heard that being black – different from the majority – and accepting yourself is good. She doesn’t see how being gay is any different.   
  
“Saying it’s a sin is called ‘homophobia’, Mercedes,” Dad continues. “If you hear anyone using words like that to insult people, you need to report them right away.”   
  
Mercedes means to, but she doesn’t. The boys who have started throwing Kurt Hummel in dumpsters now – he’s gotten too tall for the trash cans – are muscled and scary, and most of them are on the middle-school football team. The last thing she wants is to get hurt for defending someone else.   
  
Azimio Adams goes to her church, though, and one day she asks him to stop. “What did Kurt ever do to you?” she says to him.   
  
Azimio scowls and shoves her, and she doesn’t talk to him about it again.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes starts her period somewhere between seventh and eighth grade, and starts gaining weight what seems like a millisecond after. She’s always been stocky, but her mom said it was just kid weight, puppy fat, and wasn’t a problem.   
  
Now, her doctor says she’s in the ninety-second weight percentile but only the fifty-seventh for height, and for the first time in her life, uses the words _weight control_. The way he looks at her, like she’s some kind of horrible disappointment for gaining weight, makes her feel about half an inch tall.   
  
“It’s a good thing we caught this early,” her mother says cheerfully on the drive home. “Mercedes, sweetie, it’s not a big deal. We just have to find some kind of exercise that works for you, and get healthier things to eat. We’ll get through this, okay?”   
  
Mercedes crosses her arms over her breasts, which are two sizes bigger than they were six months ago, and _glares_. “Fat isn’t a disease,” she mutters.   
  
Mom doesn’t answer, but Mercedes is pretty sure that she would object if she opened her mouth. Soon after, snacks start to appear fewer and farther between on the kitchen shelves, and she only feels worse and worse about herself every time that Mom or Dad gives her a raised eyebrow at dinner.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes is a freshman at McKinley High School, just turned fifteen, when Eric is accepted to almost every college he applies to. Case Western offers him a huge scholarship, though, and that’s where he decides to go.   
  
“The engineering programs are amazing,” he says to her after he gets his acceptance letters, overflowing with excitement. “Hard science, too. I think I want to major in BME.”   
  
“What?” Ever since he started AP Biology two years ago, her brother has started speaking a language that seems to be made up mostly of abbreviations. Mercedes, for her part, hasn’t started AP classes yet, but next year, she’s going to take AP History. Ms. Pillsbury, the guidance counselor, says that she has a mind perfect for the humanities.   
  
“Biomedical engineering,” he says. “Maybe I could be a neuroscientist.”   
  
“Cutting into people’s heads?” Mercedes shivers at the thought. “Wow. That sounds really difficult.”   
  
“Yeah, it is.” He shrugs. “Probably four or six more years of school after I get my bachelor’s, but hey. It’s worth it, right?”   
  
“I dunno. Isn’t that hella expensive?” Eric’s scholarship pays almost all of his tuition, but room and board – as her parents like to say – costs an arm and a leg.   
  
“Yeah, but I can always look out for financial aid. It helps to be black and a genius.” Eric grins and punches her lightly in the shoulder. “You proud of me?”   
  
Mercedes laughs. “You’re not a genius. You’re just a nerd.”   
  
“I’m not a nerd!” Eric looks indignant for all of maybe three seconds. “Yeah, whatever. Case has a great music program, you know. You could always look at it.”   
  
“Yeah?” Mercedes is pretty sure music school isn’t an option, what with her parents’ constant talk of ‘employability’ (if Mom thinks she’s going to be an accountant like her, though, she needs to think again), but maybe she could major in music. “Did you learn anything about it?”   
  
“I saw the concert choir perform once when I was on a tour. They sounded _awesome_.”   
  
Mercedes is jealous. The choir program at McKinley is kind of nonexistent; there’s a choir room, but it’s mostly occupied by creepy Mr. Ryerson the music teacher and whatever tenor he’s trying to hit on that week. Rachel Berry constantly complains about how Principal Figgins doesn’t have his priorities straight regarding the necessity of a good music program (her words, _not_ Mercedes’s), and for once, Mercedes agrees with her. “You should take me sometime.”   
  
“After I start school, I will. Just let me get my bearings first, you know. Start getting my grades in and stuff.”   
  
“What?” she teases. “Afraid you’re gonna fail?” _That’s_ not very likely, though. Eric got over 1500 on the SATs, and she’s pretty sure he’s never failed anything in his life, except possibly his driving test the first time. She lost count of how many A’s he brings home a long time ago.   
  
Eric rolls his eyes. “Like that’s gonna happen. You have some big shoes to fill, baby sister.”   
  
She’s well aware of that. Her teachers this year have asked if she’s related to Eric Jones about a million times. If she didn’t get almost all A’s, too, she’d have an inferiority complex or something. “Don’t remind me.”   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes is a sophomore before anyone at school gets off their asses and does something about McKinley’s lack of a choir program. When a sign-up sheet gets posted on the bulletin board for auditions for Mr. Schuester’s new show choir, she’s the first to put her name on the list.   
  
She sings “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” not because she wants to make herself out to be some kind of soul singer – even though she’s damn good at her solos in church choir – but because she’s determined to be _something_ here. Rachel Berry got Mr. Ryerson to work with her last year because she complained and whined and threatened to sic her two gay dads’ legal pull on him, but Mercedes wants to blow everyone out of the water with her vocal power.   
  
Mr. Schuester stares at her for about five seconds after she finishes. “Very good, Mercedes,” he says, clapping his hands slowly. “Welcome to New Directions!”   
  
Right now, she feels ten feet tall, and growing. Mr. Schuester’s smile, the way he claps his hands, even the way he leaned forward in his seat to watch her while she was singing – they’re unspoken signs that he _really, really_ likes her voice.   
  
Standing on this stage, with a microphone in her hand and an adoring fan (well, sort of, but a Spanish teacher is a good start) in front of her, she resolves that she’s going to find ways to keep making herself this happy.   
  
Of course, Rachel Berry ruins it from the start. Once Mr. Schuester brings in that giant jock Finn Hudson to croon with his white leading lady – and Mercedes doesn’t give a damn if Rachel could be biracial, because she sure as hell doesn’t _look_ like it, and that counts for more than genes – Rachel gets even more insufferable than usual.   
  
Mercedes hates being rude, but even more than that, she hates being shoved to the side and stomped on by some tiny diva, only different from the snotty bitch cheerleaders in that she doesn’t have anyone to treat like crap. “I _ain’t_ no Kelly Rowland,” she spits, but what she means is _I’m not your goddamn background singer. Treat me like the talent you and I know I am, or I’ll keep objecting._   
  
Rachel keeps getting the solos, but she stops shoving Mercedes out of the way and flipping her hair into her face. That’s something, at least.   
  


~

  
  
Grandma Julia takes Mercedes out for an early birthday present a month or so before she turns sixteen. “You should have had this a long time ago, sweetie,” she says, “but your mother just isn’t reasonable.”   
  
When Mercedes comes home with her first-ever weave, her mom cries.   
  
Mercedes’s face flames with guilt under her new hair, and she’s tempted to go back to the salon and ask them to give her her natural hair back – but when she goes to school the next day, she starts getting positive looks. She figures that with her size, they aren’t something she can afford to just cut off.   
  
Kurt Hummel is the first boy she thinks might actually be interested in her, but it turns out that their new friendship just coincidentally happened to start post-weave. He’s gay, and wouldn’t be interested in her regardless of her hair texture.   
  
Whatever. He’s interesting and likes the same TV shows as she does, and they agree to disagree about which boys in school are the best-looking. For the first time in ten years, they’re friends, and Mercedes wishes that she’d ignored the bullies and hung out with him a long time ago.   
  


~

  
  
Quinn Fabray is pregnant.   
  
Holy shit.   
  
The dust has barely settled from that fallout when the news breaks that Quinn’s been kicked out of her house. Mercedes has to spend a few months – months during which Quinn is apparently miserable at first Finn’s, then Puck’s – working up the courage to ask her parents a very important question.   
  
“Pregnant, huh?” Her dad shakes his head and changes the TV channel. “The blonde kid, right? That’s a real shame.”   
  
“Yeah.” Mercedes slides a little ways down the couch. “Her parents kicked her out.”   
  
“Hm.” He flips the channel again. “I’m not surprised.”   
  
Mercedes breathes in deeply. “Dad, can she stay here? Just until she has her baby?”   
  


~

  
  
Quinn stays in Eric’s room for three months, until just after Regionals and her early labor. After her mother takes her home, Mercedes wanders into her brother’s room (although maybe it’s Quinn’s room, now, too) and lies down on the bed. It smells more feminine in here now, of course, and if she closes her eyes, she can catch the scent of that cherry-blossom soap with micro beads that’s still in the bathtub.   
  
They’ve had fun, these few months. There were a few times that one of Quinn’s middle-of-the-night bathroom trips overlapped with a weekend, and she and Mercedes would end up making chocolate pudding pie in the kitchen and giggling and cursing Coach Sylvester the whole time. They watched old movies together and decided that Rachel was dead wrong: _Yentl_ definitely trumped _Funny Girl_ , although they didn’t admit to her that they watched either. Quinn even went to church with Mercedes and her parents, and although she looked uncomfortable there, Mercedes appreciated the effort.   
  
Brittany and Santana are doing it – that’s pretty much common knowledge, at least in Glee after Brittany told. There’s precedent, then. Does wanting Quinn to come back, and to hold her and rest her head against her shoulder, make Mercedes…bisexual? She’s at least a little attracted to Puck – the guy’s hot, even if he’s a total man-whore, so she knows she’s not a lesbian.   
  
They don’t really talk about same-sex attraction at church, except for a few sermons about the sanctity of marriage, but she figures Mom and Dad are probably more right about gay people than Pastor Miller is. He’s about a hundred and fifty years old and probably doesn’t even know what the Internet is, and he still uses the word ‘sodomite.’ Who _does_ that?   
  
Mercedes flops down on Eric’s - _Quinn’s_ \- bed and stares at the ceiling. “I’m confused,” she says, but the ceiling has about as much helpful advice as Mr. Schuester does. Yeah, she still holds a grudge.   
  


~

  
  
Eric declares his major in BME in the middle of his sophomore year, and asks Mercedes to come for a visit over fall break. She takes Mom’s car and drives up to Case with a duffel bag and a few books, just in case Eric’s turned boring and she can’t find anything to do overnight.   
  
“Hey, little sister!” Eric says when she walks up to his dorm, and hugs her hard enough to knock the wind out of her.   
  
“Hot _damn_ ,” she gasps. “Have you been working out?”   
  
Eric lets go of her, strikes a pose, and flexes. “We’re all nerds here,” he says. “If I work out, I’m hotter than about ninety-five percent of the guys here.”   
  
Mercedes laughs. “Got a girlfriend?”   
  
He makes a face. “I’m working on it.”   
  
Eric has a surprise for her: student tickets to the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra at Severance Hall. Mercedes is, for lack of a better word, spellbound. The hall is gorgeous, with a beautiful, gold-painted ceiling, and the orchestra – she has to close her eyes to take in all the amazing sound. It vibrates through her like not even her own solos do, down through her lungs and to the tips of her toes.   
  
“That was _awesome!_ ” she says when the concert is over. “Where do they _find_ these guys?”   
  
Eric shrugs. “Everywhere, I guess,” he says. “They have great music majors here, though. I have friends in the concert choir, and you wouldn’t _believe_ how they sing.”   
  
He makes a few calls, and an hour later, Mercedes, Eric, Lin, and Tyler meet up at the student center for a milkshake. Lin, who’s an alto, tells Mercedes that the way Mr. Schuester gives out solos is a bunch of bullshit. “Your director sounds like he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she says. “I mean, _listen_ to you. You’ve got vocal power I can hear even when you’re just speaking.” She shakes her head. “Second soprano?”   
  
“Either,” Mercedes says. “I can sing in a first range.” God, it’s _so_ good to talk to someone who knows vocal terminology. Rachel yaks about no one else pulling their weight all the time, but Mercedes doesn’t think she’s ever so much as mentioned breath control.   
  
“Yeah? Cool. I’m a second tenor,” Tyler breaks in. “Don’t worry. Once you get to college, directors pretty much quit being biased, since they haven’t known you for forever. You’ll get your spotlight.”   
  
Mercedes takes a spoonful of her Heath bar milkshake. “Sweet,” she says. “Do you like the songs you sing?”   
  
“Sure. It’s mostly pretty challenging, some classic stuff – you know, Mozart,” Tyler says. “We might do the Requiem this year.”   
  
Everyone claps when he stands up and demonstrates the Confutatis movement. “You should apply,” he says when he sits back down, cheeks pink with what looks like a mix of embarrassment and happiness. “I think you’d do great here.”   
  


~

  
  
It takes another year before Mercedes asserts herself and does something not even Rachel tried: she quits New Directions for real, and joins that spoiled bitch Sugar Motta in her new group along with Santana and Brittany.   
  
Shelby Corcoran warns them that she’s going to work them hard. “We’re an all-female group, so we’re going to have to branch out with our harmonies,” she says at the first official practice. “Okay. Who here knows their vocal part?”   
  
Mercedes and Santana raise their hands, and Shelby points to them. “Santana. What do you sing?”  
  
“Alto,” Santana says, and crosses her arms. The look in her eyes clearly says that if that’s a problem, she’ll leave here, too.   
  
Instead of sending her to the background, though, Shelby nods approvingly. “Good. We’ll do some chest-voice work here, and we need a strong leader for that. What’s your take on country music? There are some wonderful, rich solos there.”   
  
“It’s fine,” Santana answers. She actually looks taken aback. “I…like it.”   
  
“Good. I’ll definitely spend some time working on those smoky tones of yours. Mercedes, how about you?”   
  
“Soprano,” Mercedes says. “First or second.”   
  
Shelby smiles. “I’m guessing you’re more of a lyric soprano. I’ll work with you on your range, and we’ll see about strengthening your high notes. I heard you at the 2010 regionals, and I think you could get even better.”   
  
Their first public song, the one they sing at the competition with New Directions, is “Candy Man.” The costumes Brittany designs for them are kind of ridiculous, but their voices blend together so well that Mercedes forgets she’s wearing a stupid 1940s pilot’s outfit and just enjoys singing. She gets some solo lines, but so do Santana and Brittany, and she finds that Brittany is actually good at chanting.   
  
“That was fucking _fantastic_ ,” Santana says later, when they’re taking off their stage makeup. “Holy crap, Mercedes. I rag on you, but you pulled us together.”   
  
“So did you,” Mercedes replies, rubbing off her blush. “Shelby’s right. Your voice really _is_ awesome.”   
  
That’s probably the reason Mr. Schuester sends Finn out as his damn lackey (which is a word Mercedes encountered on the SATs last year – she ended up with a 2200, for which Mom and Dad treated her to dinner someplace that wasn’t Breadstix) to ask them to come back. No… _beg_. They’re guaranteed solos when they lose Sectionals to New Directions, and that’s enough to make Mercedes say yes to the sham of an offer.   
  
They absolutely nail “What Doesn’t Kill You” at Regionals, and it’s almost worth having to be in New Directions again just to see Mr. Schuester’s jaw fucking _drop_.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes gets into Ohio State, University of Cincinnati, Cornell (the one in Iowa, not the one in New York), UCLA, and Case Western. All of them offer her scholarships that cover at least half of her costs, even including room and board in the equation.   
  
“See?” Eric tells her when he comes home on spring break. “I told you, it pays to be black and a genius.”   
  
She smacks him, but she also looks over all the acceptance and scholarship letters, and when she makes her choice, she tells her family first and gets the group hug of her _life_.   
  
Puck is the next person she tells – she doesn’t know why, but he seems like he’ll be supportive, and she’s right. “Hey, awesome!” he exclaims when she tells him the news, and slaps her on the back, nearly sending her into the lockers (damn, the guy is _strong_ ). “Just don’t turn into one of those, you know, drones. Have some fun up there.”   
  
“I plan on it,” she says.   
  
When she tells everyone else at school, though, she gets a lot of blank stares and no congratulations.   
  
“But don’t you want to sing?” Rachel asks. “I can’t imagine that any of these schools have programs as high-caliber as NYADA.”   
  
“I can sing at Case,” Mercedes says, and congratulates herself for not telling Rachel to just shut up about NYADA already. “Their vocal performance major is great.”   
  
“But the _video_ ,” Sam says. He looks so damn disappointed that Mercedes wants to wrap her arms around him, but she settles for taking his hand instead.   
  
“It’s YouTube,” she says. “Yeah, a lot of people liked it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll be able to get a _job_ as a singer. Not with the economy as bad as it is.”   
  
“Mercedes, you’re _talented_ ,” Mr. Schuester says.   
  
_That_ one feels like a slap in the face, even though she doesn’t really care what he thinks anymore. “Yeah, okay,” she snaps, “so just ‘cause I can sing, I should give up everything else and follow some dream I haven’t even planned out?” That’s harsh, yeah, but she means it. Turning to face everyone else in the choir room, she goes on.  
  
“Guys, I got offered a huge scholarship. That’s not something you just throw away. I _like_ this school, okay? I think I’m gonna be really happy there, and you know what? Do you _really_ think a music producer or whoever is gonna want someone with no education?”   
  
She leaves the room, then – not storming out or making a scene, just leaving. For once, she knows she made a good decision that goes against the wishes of everyone else in Glee, and she’s not going to let them talk her out of something else she deserves.   
  


~

  
  
The summer before her freshman year at Case, Puck sneaks Mercedes into the local Jewish community center on a guest membership pass (“gotta do what I can for my hot ex,” he says, citing the awesomeness of the movie nights there), and she discovers the swimming pool.   
  
In three months, she goes down fifteen pounds and two dress sizes and lets her natural hair grow out a little, and in her opinion (as well as Puck’s more vagina-educated one), she looks hot. “You still got plenty of meat on your bones,” he says one day in August, leering at her (albeit harmlessly). “I love it. You wanna hook up before school starts?”   
  
“Nope.” But she appreciates the effort.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes is twenty and a sophomore when she declares a double major in music and psychology. She’s a second soprano in the concert choir (Lin, who’s a junior now, was right about her vocal power), and some of the perfectionistic neuroticism she sees in her friends – well, it reminds her enough of McKinley (especially Rachel) that she takes a psych course to see whether there’s some kind of link between music and perfectionism.   
  
She can’t find one, but the class she takes turns her on to psychology as a discipline, and before she knows it, she’s looking at graduate programs in music therapy and registering for junior-year courses in neuroscience (and wouldn’t the glee club flip their collective _lid_ if they knew, even though her parents couldn’t be prouder), and she makes plans to stay on campus the summer after sophomore year and take classes then.   
  
That’s also the summer Quinn comes back into her life.   
  
It starts with a knock on the door of the apartment she’s subletting, at 11 AM one Saturday. She groans and gets out of bed with some difficulty, answering the door in just a T-shirt and sleeping shorts (if the person on the other side of the door is offended that a size-sixteen girl would dare to do that, well, tough). “Hey,” she says with a yawn, opening the door. “Can I help you?”   
  
The voice is familiar, and recognizable even before she clears the fog out of her eyes. “Mercedes?”   
  
“Oh. Hey, Quinn! What’re you doing here? I thought you were at Yale.” Quinn hasn’t changed much – her hair is still blonde and chin-length, and her sense of style still looks like it remains fixated on sundresses.   
  
“I’m visiting a friend here,” Quinn says, “and I looked you up in the directory. How’ve you been?” She smiles, and Mercedes’s sudden, pounding heartbeat brings her back four years, back to when she was lying on her bed and wondering who it was that she liked.   
  
“Fine. I’m taking summer courses. Do you want to come in?” Mercedes wishes she’d worn a bra to bed, but whatever – she couldn’t have foreseen this. “I have leftover pancakes, if you’re hungry.”   
  
Quinn is indeed hungry. Somehow, eating pancakes at the kitchen table, with the morning sun turning to noon and then afternoon light, takes over three hours. Mercedes goes to the library and rents some movies, and they spend the rest of the day talking and watching romantic comedies, and eating cinnamon-bun popcorn.   
  
It turns out that Quinn is still studying drama at Yale, but she’s switched her concentration to teaching, taking up a double major in education as well. Mercedes tells her she’s looking to go into music therapy, and talks about the difficulty of finding off-campus places that she can actually get to without her car.   
  
Quinn tells her that she’s started going to a Unitarian Universalist church in New Haven, and that she came out to her mother earlier this year.   
  
That last part is only said between kisses, and it’s a little self-evident, all things considered, especially since Quinn ends up staying the night.   
  


~

  
  
Mercedes is twenty-eight years old and her name is finally known the world over. In conjunction with her brother – now Eric Jones, M.D., Ph.D - she’s pioneered new forms of music therapy that have had almost miraculous consequences for patients with aphasia and other forms of damaged neural tissue. Yale hired her last year after she finished her Ph.D there, and she’s looking to open a clinical practice after a few more years of research.   
  
She releases an album of alternating songs and speech exercises, and she hears that it’s sold ten thousand copies on the day of her wedding.   
  
When she gets an invitation to her tenth high-school reunion, she turns to her wife with a smile and asks, “What do you think? Should we go, or not?”   
  
“It’s not like we don’t already know everything about everyone,” Quinn replies. “But hey,” she adds, slipping her arm around Mercedes’s waist, “why not?”   
  
They make the trip back to Lima the night before the reunion and stay with Mercedes’s parents, and when they walk through the auditorium door, with the eyes of the Lima Class of 2012 on them, Mercedes knows that she’s a star.   
  
It doesn’t matter as much now, though. What matters is that, finally, she’s found love and a career that inspires her to do better every day, and she is finally happy.   
  
The original New Directions seniors sing their old Journey medley in a tribute to Mr. Schuester and their sophomore year, and Mercedes’s voice is the loudest.


End file.
